Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry

First edition.  xiv, 296pp.  In red cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  8vo.  Cloth very slightly pushed at spine head.  Hint of spotting to text block edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In it’s original illustrated dust wrapper, faded around spine, bumped along upper edge with minor loss and crack at spine head,  a little shelf worn.

It has long been assumed that Roman poetry was constructed under the dictates of elaborately defined rules of rhetoric and its content determined according to classifications called inventio.  Williams challenges this understanding, demonstrating that although this may have been true of Ovid and his successors, earlier poets employed quite different methods.